I'd like to call this meeting of Monroe County stormwater management board to order. It is Wednesday,
October 1st, 2025. It is 332 PM. So first item on the agenda is public input for items not on the agenda.
So it does not look like there is
There is an abundance of people in the NatU Hill Room. Is there anyone in the NatU Hill Room who would
like to provide public commentary for items not on the agenda? Seeing no one. Here, is there anyone
online who would like to provide public input for items not on the agenda? I can confirm that those
are all county employees except for maybe cats.
Yes, so with that, I see no one. So we will move on to the next item on the agenda, which is the approval
of the minutes for September 3rd, 2025. So moved. Does anyone? I will second that. The last name of
the person speaking and not the first name.
only. I actually noticed that. Thank you so much very much for making that comment. And just to note
for the record that who's present here. Yes. Yep. And I will go ahead and do that actually right now.
We have Commissioner Thomas, Commissioner Madeira, and Surveyor and Wright Randolph present. And also
Erica Bina,
And we have, yes, I'm sorry, as well, the difficulties of being a new commissioner who remembers faces
but not names. Apologies for that.
We have a motion for approval of minutes for September 3rd, 2025, and a second. Does anyone have any
comments on the minutes for September 3rd, 2025? Since maybe I motion, I'll make sure it's clear that
the revisions are a friendly amendment to my motion. I don't know if we need to be that formal or not.
I will also note that Ms. Barbrook is online, so I'm sure she'll change that.
Thanks for pointing that out. All those in favor of approving the minutes for September 3rd, say aye.
Aye. Next item on the agenda is approval of minutes for September 22nd, 2025, which was the special
budget update meeting.
I'll move approval. I can't say if there's any changes on that one. Were those done more in
line, Commissioner Thomas? I'm not sure which set of minutes had the mix up in the last name,
first name, but just check them both. It's fine. Yeah, we'll just go ahead and add if they need to be
revised, please revise that. Yes.
And so is there a second for that? Yes, I second it. OK, perfect. Any more comments on those? All right,
then I would like to, all those who would like to, who, I'm sorry, I am tongue tied today. All those
in favor of approving the minutes for September 22, 2025, please say aye. Aye.
Okay, next item is the stormwater expenditure report for August 2025. We really only had two larger
payouts and one was for the backfill $8,133.82 and gas oil and lube $5,356.83. Thank you.
Then we can move on to new business. Oh sorry. This might be a little premature because it was a fast-paced
discussion yesterday at the council level but they were talking about zeroing out capital expenditures
and they referred to a line with one dollar in it and my concern is that might be the street sweeper line and
just want to bring that to your attention if that's the council's desire that's fine but if we're able
to keep that dollar in there then we don't have to go through the whole process of creating a line and
then simultaneously asking for additional appropriation and it just kind of makes things a bit smooth
easier and more in a timely manner so I just want to bring that to your attention like I said it was a very
fast-paced discussion, and I wasn't able to track it 100 percent, but I do think that's what the dollar
was that they referred to. Commissioner Thomas? Okay. Moving on to new business, we have a Memorandum
of Understanding with the Indiana Curse Conservancy.
Yes, we have been working with the Indiana Cave Survey on a memorandum of understanding to be able to
utilize some of their information during our plan reviews. We use several different data sources for
our reviews that are publicly available at the state level, but with this being a private organization,
we needed to have a
a clear and defined way that that information was going to be used, who would have access to it and
just general terms of that agreement. We do have one representative here with the the CAVE survey if
you have any questions for them as well. I think it would be great and maybe even a better value of
your time by if you just wanted to come and
introduce yourself and you know speak maybe to this agreement but anything else you would love to share
that could be beneficial to the public or us. Okay I am a board member and I do want to make one correction
of the agenda. The organization is that should be the Indiana cave survey. I was gonna ask. The Carr's
Conservancy is a sister organization but they do have two different boards and agreements with the caves
Indiana cave survey as you see on the screen.
at least the agreement there is correct. Yeah, the agreement's right. It was just the agenda listing.
And basically, we're a private organization that collects data. We've been around for almost 40 years.
And we like to collect it, but we also want to utilize appropriately and protect the caves. And it seems
like a good match with, we've talked to both the stormwater people and the county planning.
and they had interested in utilizing it. So we came up with the agreement and what else other questions
you would have? No, I think it's great. Sometimes it's a hot mic. I think it's great. I was happy that
I got here just a bit earlier to chat with you. And I'm just really curious if you would like to share with us
a success story by these collaborations and how these protect these very sensitive and vulnerable resources
across the state? If one pops out, I don't want to put you on the spot, but I would be so thrilled to
hear anything such as a success story. We have had a data sharing agreement with Lockbueller consulting
for a number of years. We provide a lot of information on I-69, so they had all that
information as they were doing the environmental studies for I-69. And they did do some in the tier
one, tier two, steering away from known cars features. That's awesome. Thank you so much. And I know
you have to be very sensitive of not like talking about location, but thank you for sharing. I really
appreciate it. And I'm just really happy to give you the opportunity to kind of express some of what
is very valuable with this agreement.
comment is I'm glad you're here today and thank you for doing this on a make the motion to accept the
memorandum of understanding between Indiana cave survey and the Monroe County
I think there's one note it's it's going to be going to the commissioners right because it's a the agreement
is with the county commissioner so it's coming here first because we are the office that's kind of managing
the agreement to pass this on to the commissioners with positive recommendation okay yes be thrilled to
recommend this in a very favorable way to the board of commissioners. And I'm also just thrilled to
be able to have the ability for a favorable recommendation. Excited to be included. Is that a second?
And a second. I thought it was. Excellent. We have a motion and a second. Is there any public comment?
Obviously, we don't have anyone here. Members of the public, are there any members of the public online?
or anyone who would like to offer commentary on this agenda item. Seeing no one, I would actually like
to hold a vote on the memorandum of understanding with the Indiana cave survey. Although just as a note,
it does say on the agenda, Indiana curse conservancy that should say Indiana cave survey. All in favor
say aye. Aye. Aye. Thank you.
This brings us to the second item of new business, the HNTB assignment number two, post-construction
attention, basin maintenance assessment. So I will start this by showing you the map of the location.
So we're old Vernal Pike.
comes around Loesch Road and Vernal Pike. There are two county-owned detention basins there, which from
the aerials you might not be able to tell that they are any kind of detention areas. They're very wooded.
The infrastructure that's in place is very old and broken in some
parts or just very filled in with silt and debris so it's not holding back water as it should. So this
task order with HNTB, we have an on-call contract with them, is for
evaluation of the current state of both of those basins and putting together a maintenance plan for
tree removal, regrading, and then revegetation as well as potential infrastructure replacement. So as
you know the stormwater program we should be managing our detention basins to the standard that we expect
others to be maintaining theirs as well.
had a question, and that's just how often is this maintenance needed? I guess it's a fairly routine
item. There's typical things that happen on a seasonal basis, so kind of in the spring and the fall,
other things that happen just annually, and then other larger things that might happen less frequently.
But if you're doing that maintenance in the spring and fall, those larger maintenance items do tend to be
more spread out between frequencies. So I don't think that there's been any maintenance performed on
these. I know that they serve their regional detention for the commercial and industrial areas to the
west of them. I couldn't find very much information about any maintenance records on them.
So if you guys have more information at the commissioner level or at the stormwater management board
level, I would love to see it. That would be helpful for us. Any comments? Commissioner Thomas? I just
want to note that the fees don't include any plans, construction oversight. So I'm assuming if the issues are
severe that we're going to have to get another entity unless we can do it. Yes, depending on the scale
of what needs to be done and what our crews are already maybe planning to do next year, it may be something
we can complete using our crews or it's something we would have to contract out. Great. Thank you for
the clarification. Thank you. Yes, and I just assumed that obtaining permits would be kind of like a
de minimis cost.
Actually, I had kind of the same question, so I'm good on that one. I also kinda just want to understand,
and you might have already expressed your limitations of kind of knowing some of how this all came together,
but a lot of times there's these type of detentions, but they're more managed by, you know,
non-government entity, right? How did these regional detention ponds become county owned and maintained?
I am not entirely sure about that. Julie might know. I do know. I see Lisa's hand is raised as well.
She might be able to. Yeah, and so
One of the things I would suggest for further information is to talk to Kelly Whitmer in parks since
we put a trail in on one of them. So I think the other is likely attached to that purchase right of
way. But I would check with her because she would have all of the construction information in those areas.
Excellent. Any more comments or questions? I had three, but somehow the last one. I was just wondering,
since Ms. Ridge rose her hand virtually, if she wanted to add on to that at all. Hello. Can you hear
me? Yes. Yes.
Okay now Julie's right we would have construction plans because what that was cars trail phase to be
and I think that was constructed around 2016 through the TIF district I believe it was funded through
that program so and then also I wanted to point out on the maintenance and everything and possibly if
we can do the work in-house luckily in this last legislative they
increase the amount that we can do in-house. It used to be, I believe, a $250,000 cap. That has increased
to be able to let in-house be able to do more. Then also the quoting and bid process, they've actually
increased that threshold for us to be able to do quotes versus bids, saving costs to the county. I just
want to throw that in, but yeah, we should have construction plans on most of the information that we
would need. Thank you so much.
glad you were able to add some fun facts in there too about our abilities to do larger projects in-house.
That's incredible. I can't wait to see some success stories on that front, too. I remembered what I
was going to say. It wasn't a question. It was just a comment. And just due to maintenance,
yearly maintenance, backup maintenance, I'll say. And then I also think there is the
unforeseen like weather storm event impacts that would need maintenance as well. So I just wanted to
mention that there's a lot of circumstances that we need to get in there and maintain these. Also, I
just want to share one other comment is this is from a session I attended at the in Assam, Indiana.
Association of Stormwater and Floodplain Management. Geez. It was all about maintenance and building
the worth of maintenance and the cost of sitting on what needs to be maintained starts to increase
dramatically. And I'm very excited to be presented with something that focuses on maintenance as much as
other things that we do that benefit stormwater. So I just wanted to share that the cost of doing it
now outweighs the cost of doing it later. Excellent. Any more comments or questions? All right.
I'd like to, since we don't have any members of the public here, see if there's any members of the public
online with any comments about HNTB assignment number two. Seeing none.
I believe we have a motion in a second, so. I don't think we have the motion. No. I move to approve
the HNTB assignment to post-construction detention basin maintenance assessment. And I'll also, if you
zoom in, put the not to exceed
on here. That's typically what the commissioners want. Do you feel like that is a good amount to add
in my motion? Not to exceed $28,500. Not to exceed $28,500. That's my motion. Second. So all in favor
of approving HNTB assignment number 2. Not to exceed $28,500. Please say aye. Aye.
All right, motion passes. Moving on to staff reports. I have nothing else for you today, so. Excellent.
Then moving on to the last item on the agenda, which is adjournment. Oh, Lisa has her hand raised.
I'm sorry. Thank you so much for pointing that out. Lisa. Sorry, I'll be really quick. I know the council
met last night.
Tron mentioned that a little bit. I do expect our budget to change. I do believe we'll go farther under
budget from some of the cuts that possibly could be taking place. They have their next meeting next
Wednesday, October 8th. We are following it so we can stay up to date on how it affects the stormwater
budget. We will keep you informed. Some of the cuts were
Uh, like I don't understand cutting the stormwater budget when we're already at or under budget. That
doesn't make sense to me because those monies don't flow anywhere else. No pun intended. So I don't
know that there'll be changes because to me it doesn't really make sense. I do that. It's a separate
fund. It's a separate fee. So it's not part of the levy. I don't get it. So I'm not sure that there
will be, but thank you for raising that.
Yeah, and the only the only thing that I want to raise on that and most of the highway budgets are in
that same category that were outside the levy and it's our own funds. I think some of the changes that
I'm hearing is across the board where it involves employees and treating everybody the same there so.
Excellent, thank you so much. Thanks for the update. Yes. And.
With that, I think we are good to adjourn. The date of our next meeting is November 5th, 2025.
Thank you all. Thank you.